Oil on Canvas
by J. Christian Farrell
Summary: Influenced by a painting at the local university, a young man reflects on his former life on an island in the Canadian Maritimes, and the boyhood friend he left there.


Oil on Canvas

_Oil on Canvas_

The lone corner sticks out, like his sore thumbs (which bleed thick red paint when he forgets to grab his pick). It is the only point in the room where daylight from the window pane, is unable to illuminate. It glows, with a subtle trace of blue, through the frosted surface; it is strained, like his voice (which is silenced amidst brushstrokes of thickened pigments of blue), across the room; though it tries, it is dying before it reaches halfway… But the corner, lonely yet inviting, stays its ground. It is an enigma to the composition.

The guitarist exists just beyond the vanishing point, slouched on his stool like an old man, bent on the chord he forms with his fingers. This could be his one song glory, _melancolico_ and staccato, billowing up from diminuendo to crescendo and back. This chord, harmonized with his bluesy vocals, is that heartfelt backdrop to his heartbroken message, which simply asks her, 'What do I do with my life, if you are not doing it with me?' And that pick he's forgotten, that pesky pick which, balanced precariously on the edge of the wooden side table, is in the company of empty beer bottles – _Budweiser_, _Labatt Blue_, _Molson_ – though unlabeled, insignificant and overlooked, it watches and listens.

The window, the white plastic mess that holds together glass panes and begrudgingly allows itself to be pushed up or down, is useless. If its purpose was to shine light into the room, it does its job with lackluster enthusiasm, defeating itself with its frosted panes. If its purpose was to reveal a street full of automobiles, whose monotonous din from below billows up like a heat wave, unnecessarily chauffeuring able bodied pedestrians from one corner to the next and beyond (until they vanish, out of sight and out of mind), if this is its task it fails to do so _because_ of its frosted glass. It is open, slightly, at the bottom. Smoke weaves its way, sinuously, through the air, rushing out like a twilit tide, intersecting the breezeway. It rises from the half-ignited cigarette resting in a small, empty can of tuna fish now a makeshift ashtray. Through the opening, barely detectable, a golden (or perhaps straw colored) puppy walks past a lamppost, his leash dragging its owner (a woman in a black hat and blood red pea coat) along. The pup is in the throws of unmatched energy. His owner, physically, is not as enthusiastic as her pet, but she doesn't have a choice. She has not his youth; he has not her experience. Has anyone? She must go with him; it is her responsibility, in this city of indefatigable structure (however redundant that may be), to be the master of her pet, yet in this moment of truth, the power is overthrown; the _status_ _quo_ shifts favoring a puppy as master and commander of his company in this sea of steel and concrete. And no one has a choice. Has _he_?

Upon the wall (plaster surfaced with a minimal luminescence of its own, in spite of its beige paint) the strained daylight hovers, glowing like the sun upon the leathery white patch of a soccer ball, or like a reddish-golden-orange sunset caught upon rippling waves. The wall would be flawless (from a distance, so impeccably off-white and shimmering with a dream-like quality) from the floor to the ceiling if it weren't for ostensible cracks in the surface or the patches of bare wall. The wooden skeleton of the building is exposed, where water damage must have chafed away the plaster and paint, and as everything is in perspective, as the walls close in, the composition has a centripetal focus for all eyes, directing them to this plain backdrop, half illuminated, half shadowed. One blemish goes boldly from the left corner, originating from a bare patch that basks, partially, in rare light from the window and partially in the shadow of that lone corner. It crosses the plain in an elongated S shape and disappears behind the guitarist's cap. Half visible, half hidden is the guitarist's face – half hopeful, half desperate – like the driving undercurrent of his song – _melancolico_ and staccato.

It is a knitted cap, perhaps fashioned by the girl in question, perhaps by a sister (Jody is her name, as the artist may tell you) or a mother (She is a Patricia) in hopes that it will prevent him from the metallic bitterness of winters in Toronto. Or, maybe he is in New York City, or maybe he is down South? Wherever people with raspy, alcohol tested, bluesy vocal chords go to make their living – that is where he is. However, maybe the financial burden keeps him Northbound, or wherever people with raspy, alcohol tested, bluesy vocal chords originate. It is not where he originates though. He may call this place home, this barren expanse of land cultivated by natives, stolen and "tamed" by colonials, now populated by strangers. He may call this place home, but I know it is not.

The guitarist is young. His skin is a smooth beige paint, not pasty … not sun burned. He has a farmer's tan. He must be an Island boy, I think. He wears a vaguely familiar jacket, brown from the artist's lack of interest in vivid colors, zipped halfway. Under it, he wears a white T-shirt, days old because it is cool inside and out, and this T-shirt knows his body's heat…captures it and holds it there. The neckline is frayed, the little tears mean nothing to the guitarist, but they mean everything to his situation. Does it reek of his smell? It is that odor which is undetectable to his nostrils. Will he wash it? Will he wait until that putrid stink is too unbearable for his housemates? Will he wash it then? Perhaps. His pants are nothing significant. Jeans, faded – ripped. He props his knee up on one of the small bars at the foot of the stool, leans the guitar base upon the knee while letting his other leg go slack, dangling like the melody he is playing… strands of _melancolico _and staccato drifting, broken, through the window. Maybe the pup will hear it from down below. Maybe the woman will stop when she hears the familiar plea, (_What will I do with my life…_) and maybe it will take her back to Paris in the late 1960's when she still enjoyed the company of her love. Maybe it won't. Maybe it's all my fanciful imagination. Is that what the artist intended? Is this where we're supposed to be? Can we relate to his situation? Can we feel his agonizing separation? Can we understand the degradation of living in an apartment with one window, one table... three large cracks in the wall? Do we know Jody or Patricia? And what about _his_ name? What is that?

What does it matter? We exist in a differently framed world where everything that is perfect is left to the imagination. Yet as I stand here looking at this incredibly poignant Bohemian, I _am_ pricked with a sense of recognition.

_What do I do with my life…_

Its his hair, I am sure… stringy straw colored hair with a delightful, delectable curl at the edge… the only strands of hair (which is more like clumps of hair) that stick out under his cap. The manner in which light catches his hair has the power to change the composition completely: in full light it is nearly bleach-blonde but in quartered light it is duller, more arbitrary… that straw color. This guitarist is Wilde's Dorian, his beauty locked beneath layers of oil-based paint on canvas. So many things buzz through my mind as I gaze into the fixed eyes of the guitarist. He does not look back into mine, and with that, I am content. His focus is on his dancing fingers smoothed beneath the artist's loving hand. So, though I stand on this side of the frame, I am certain I have seen this young man… this Dorian… elsewhere.

Was it on the street? I've never been to Toronto. Was it in passing at the University? He's probably never been here to University. Do I know his mother? I do now. She is a truly lovely woman, brown hair and an unconscious smile painted across her face. Imagine if I really knew him? Of course I never have… but I can imagine I did.

Like so….

There was the day, long ago, when we were still young boys when he turned to me, his bleach-blonde hair magnificent in the summer sun, and asked me to join his soccer team. We wore golden jerseys with black vertical stripes, our numbers carelessly printed on the back. They felt threadbare but in the heat of the Island summer sun, we don't need heavy clothing.

It is the soccer game; some of his friends are members of the team: he plays keeper, I stay on the defense (I'm not much of a charger), minding that no one gets a shot at him. The game has been raging for some time, a battle from which I have cleverly dissociated myself. The streams of green and black jerseys rushing toward our end of the field, repressed by our defense, the bodies in motion paralleling the crescendo and diminuendo of his music, and then coursing back down the field. I don't know the score of the match… they have at least one (not my fault) shot into the left hand corner of the goal… we must have more than that. The match is not important.

And, suddenly, we are older, no more soccer jerseys; just bare chests dripping with sweat as the arms pump back and forth, propelling our maturing bodies forward along the beach. The sun is setting, the temperature is dropping, and our shirts are back at the campfire, some yards away. The colors cast across the surface of the ocean (which isn't really an ocean but the St. Lawrence Bay) are in an array, capped by a darkening blue… beneath it, a paling gold that tops a once brilliant orange, the halo about the sun… that draws down the vast darkness of night. The stars are appearing, silently. Our feet are pounding out a rhythm, our breath infringing on a melody. The campfire is blazing as we approach… someone whistles, someone else makes some crude remark, and snickers ripple around the circle of life. He just takes his shirt and wipes his face, nonchalantly, turning – a smile wiped onto his face as if he were a mime. We share the subtle glance, the blazing reddish-orange light from the fire makes his eyes sparkle like stars above… and the moment is over. We've run the race together, we've finished together, but the vast feeling that embraces me, assures me that, like bodies in the ocean, we are drifting apart. He takes a seat near Jody, his sister, and picks up the guitar – that object that will define his existence. And what of mine? Running shoes? Footprints upon the sand, washed away, in the night, by that constantly moving current? I'll be remembered, but how?

…_if you are not doing it with me?_

Now where have the years gone? Patricia, his mother whose hair is brown and whose face has an unconscious smile painted across it, says he's gone to Toronto: he's dropped out of school for a semester… He's living in an apartment in the "artsy" part of that quintessentially American "Canadian" city... she says. He's recorded a CD for his music class… it's revealing, maybe brazen, confirming all the details of his life she was more comfortable guessing at… never knowing. "He's in love," she says, and I feel the tide grasp and pull me out to sea; I smile. "Good for him." I hate her, not Patricia.

This summer I won't go back. Even though my heart is on the Island, I am going to find myself miles and kilometers away. The distance between Galway and Toronto seems, to me, safe. And it is Christmas, now, as I stand looking at this composition in the art gallery. My mind has returned to my body – my personal denouement - . How long was I musing? There's something (or someone?) coming, and I must get on with my life on this side of the frame. Hovering still, between the two worlds (one world that I've created, of twilit beaches and blazing soccer games; one I am existent in) I realize how dangerous Psyche can be. I should go before the current of my imagination pulls me under again.

'What do I do with my life…'

…_if you are not doing it with me?_

Now, when I look back at that composition – the oil on canvas – there will always be a young man, brown haired and skinny, with a wistful expression across his face, in that enigmatic corner, perfectly stationed where the light reveals one side of his face in full, and leaves the other in shadow. He's a mystery. He faces the window. Does he look out? Is he listening as the guitarist sings, woeful, to his love?

'What do I do with my life if you are not doing it with me?' the heart sings in guitar strings, but to all other eyes, the lone corner sticks out, like his sore thumbs…

7


End file.
